


The Murder of Kanaya Maryam

by arad1a



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Ladystuck, Murder Mystery, Street Necromancers Doing Crimes, Urban Fantasy, all hs girls will appear in some capacity or another, many more characters who are not tagged appear, this is not a sad fic!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-13 04:31:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7962511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arad1a/pseuds/arad1a
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternatively: In which a young jadeblood in possession of a flower shop in the center of the country's most magically active city dies, leaving her human lover to become entangled in illegal magic with several witches, a killer, some thieves, a private eye, and a rather unfortunate amount of undead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One Short Sleep Past, We Wake Eternally

**Author's Note:**

> SO. even if character death fics aren't your cup of tea, i'd really like it if you could read through at least the first chapter before making a call. (i'm not really sure what else to tag this one.) like the tag says, this is not a sadfic.  
> a note that some things have gone untagged to avoid spoilers, but none of these things should be particularly concerning as far as triggers, etc.

On the afternoon that Kanaya is laid to rest in her yellowing plot in a public cemetery, the sun is obscured by a bank of clouds that promises storm.

Perhaps had she been interred in the morning, they could have avoided the unpleasant affair entirely, but any respectable troll would choose to be buried at night. It is only due to Kanaya’s particular affection for the sunlight (and perhaps due to Rose Lalonde’s importance in the proceedings) that a compromise has been struck. And so it is drizzling unpleasantly in the late afternoon when they bury Kanaya Maryam, the sky orange above them, and the air hot and so humid it is nearly soupy.  

It is supremely uncomfortable. But funeral wear and summer evening dress have very little overlap, and the deceased herself would be so scandalized by the lack of mourning dress at her own funeral that she would roll over in her not-yet-filled-in grave. So it is the one thing that is right about Kanaya’s demise, the subsequent investigation, and her currently ongoing funeral- the fact that everyone present is fit to have a great collective heat stroke.

There are a great many things that are wrong about the whole unpleasant affair of Kanaya’s life coming to a close.

There is the yellowing grass under their feet, which doubtless could not be helped, (despite the heat, summer draws to a close) but which Kanaya still would not have tolerated. There is the large crowd itself, which Kanaya would have been bashfully appreciative of, but which she was too private a person to really _want_. There is the headstone, a woefully short summation of all that Kanaya was. There is the coffin, closed throughout the ceremony, due to the unpresentable nature of the corpse. There is the fact that even as they stand, watching the coffin be lowered into the earth with depressing finality, the thing or man that murdered her roams the city free. There is the fact that she had not taken Rose with her.

Eleven sweeps, seven perigrees, and perhaps several weeks or so. It is entirely too short a time for a person to have lived.

The girl who is speaking to the congregation, an appropriately solemn look on her face, is Porrim Maryam. She shares Kanaya’s horns, and also Kanaya’s tireless poise, chin up even as she watches the cherry oak finish vanish beneath a smattering of dirt. She is to be lauded for her business-like approach to the burial. There is something so depressing about people who cry while giving eulogies.

Jade Harley, a tall girl with old-fashioned glasses and typically unruly hair that has been pulled back for the occasion, is one row behind Rose. She sniffles ostentatiously into a tissue when Porrim falls silent.

When the service ends, and Kanaya’s corpse lays under six feet of freshly placed dirt, Vriska is the first to leave. She stands, dressed in her ill-fitting suit, and passes Rose by without so much as a belligerent stare. For Vriska it is a remarkably contained exit. Perhaps she has already gotten the inevitable urge to shake someone and scream out of her system. Perhaps she simply does not want to ruin Kanaya’s funeral. It may be that even the indomitable Vriska Serket, perish the thought, is affected by the death of one of her closest friends.

Behind her, the remainder of the attendees trickle out.

Roxy, who Rose knows was fond of Kanaya, offers her sister the politest hug that is possible before taking her leave. She squeezes her to her chest, smelling nicely of lavender, and whispers before leaving; “I’ll be waiting in the car.”

After Roxy there is a pleasant girl from down the street whose name Rose does not care enough to remember, who says- “It’s a shame such a terrible thing had to happen to her.”

There is a middle-aged woman who Rose does not quite recognize, who says Kanaya “-was a lovely young woman,” with teary eyes.

“Too young,” Rose’s next well-wisher seems to agree.

“What a terrible tragedy,” someone else tells her as they pass by.

Dirk pats her on the shoulder on his way out.

“It’s such a _tragedy_ ,” Jade Harley says as soon as Dirk is gone, and she is still pressing at her eyes with the soggy bit of tissue paper, the structural integrity of which is sure to be suffering. “I can’t believe how strong you’re being, Rose. I told myself I wasn’t going to blubber everywhere at the funeral!”

“It seems to have been a lost cause,” Rose settles for, certain malice would be inappropriate, and Jade nods, very weepy.

“I just don’t know what I’m going to do without her,” she says, green eyes mournful, and clasps Rose’s hands tightly in hers. “Rose, I can’t imagine how hard this is for you. We’ve got to promise to help each other. If you ever need _anything-_ ”

“I expect you shall be more than happy to oblige.”

Jade nods, and lets go of Rose’s hands in order to blow her nose.

When Jade is gone, head hung like the very picture of mournful desolation, Rose is left alone in front of her flimsy, cushioned, metal chair. In the heat, her eyeliner has gone slightly smudgy, and her hair sticks to her forehead.

On one level, Rose is aware that the sudden silence is likely a subtle attempt to give her space with Kanaya’s fresh grave, and on another level she is very numb. There is a buzzing between her ears, where Rose supposes that the thought processes pertaining to her last farewell to Kanaya ought to be happening, but the thoughts themselves refuse to come. She is not a girl at her girlfriend’s funeral. She is a small woman in a field that does not feel quite large enough for her, on a plot of land that feels smaller the emptier it becomes.

Carefully, she picks up the black clutch from her seat.

Every inhabitant of Serenity worth their weight in enchanted quartz knows that Kanaya Maryam has been murdered, and a smaller but still fairly impressive amount know that she has been murdered by an eldritch horror called forth out of the nether by a remarkably stupid or simply malicious practitioner of dark and unusual arts. This is the sort of secret which no one quite wants to say except under the cover of night and which the police are not quite willing to admit, but which everyone knows just the same. The door  to her flat is sealed shut by quarantine tape; a notification of magical contamination taped under the peephole. A detective from the magical crimes unit arrives, clad in sunglasses and white latex gloves, and several reporters show up, convinced the death of Kanaya Maryam will catapult them to reporter rockstar status. And the rumors spread, as they are liable to do.

A practitioner of dark and unusual arts both, Rose Lalonde is nevertheless not quite stupid and generally not _too_ malicious. The scope of her magical practice is limited to communing with the dark entities that enable such magics to be wrought. Summoning dark gods and demons is a fairly profitable business, for the young entrepreneur who accepts the risk of being worn about the town as an attractive meatsuit, but there is less danger (and also less profit) in just talking to them. It comes with the added caveat of being _mostly_ trusted not to have murdered one’s girlfriend.

Mostly is not entirely, which is why when Rose buys a cup of coffee in the morning the barista is just as likely to tell her “I’m so _sorry,_ ” as scowl at her like, in lieu of a vase to throw in their lover’s spat, she’d summoned an elder god to kill Kanaya instead.

Or why, when she walks past the door to Kanaya’s flat, the old woman walking down the neighboring stairs is liable to give her a look like Rose has just crushed a kitten beneath her booth, and why the mailman does not look at her when delivering Roxy’s mail to her door, and why when Rose meets someone’s eye on the bus there is occasionally the look of recognition and then the hurried glance away.

It doesn’t seem to _matter_ , not really, that Rose’s innocence has been legally vindicated; that she has no motive and more importantly no opportunity, that she had not even been arraigned for the charge. A certain percentage of the population will always think that she had been guilty of her girlfriend’s murder, and Rose herself will be left out in the cold. Left out of the hushed and fast-stagnating investigation, and locked out of the flat she has been living in for two years by a threat of magical contamination, and alienated by her friends and family with sympathetic looks and sincere offers of help, like she wants their _help_. Like she really wants anything but to be left alone to get along with her life, thank you very much, a life which no longer includes Kanaya Maryam but which it is her solemn duty to continue living nonetheless.

All in all, she thinks she prefers the accusatory looks to the piteous ones.

The city gets darker and grayer the closer that you get to the center, in exact correlation to the signs of life that crawl their way up the sides of the old buildings and make themselves known. Serenity is an old city, and old brownstones are crowded together like boxy brown dwarves packed shoulder to shoulder, and all up their faces crawl peeling paint and stripes of vibrant fabric. By the time the light makes its way to the streets, lined with shop faces and stalls, it’s gray and filtered out, leaving the walking inhabitants in a kind of perpetual shadow. Under this shadow, Solarium Flowers sits, crowded between a thrift store and a kitchenware shop, with peeling green paint and curly gold script.

Feferi Peixes is outside the store when Rose passes by, accompanied by her shadow, a reedy boy named Eridan Ampora with a nearly constant frown on his face. She is wearing black, but is alive with so much energy and decked in so much colorful jewelry any hope of sombriety is ruined anyway, and is clutching a set of flyers in her hands. Across the street, Rose can hear nearly every word she speaks demanding that Eridan tack the poster up higher.

“ _Rose_!” she nearly shrieks upon catching sight of Rose, and any hope of leaving quietly is dashed. Feferi waves at her with remarkable enthusiasm, and shouts: “Stay right there!”

Rose is left to watch with a bemused fascination, cooling coffee clasped in her hands, as Feferi clutches her flyers to her chest and shoves several rolled up posters into Eridan’s arms. When Eridan looks as if he might protest, for some reason Rose cannot fathom (As if Eridan Ampora would pass up the opportunity to be a nuisance and a pest in her presence!), Feferi seizes his arm and bodily pushes him into the street.

“Hello, Rose,” Feferi says as she finally approaches, breathless, all flustered about something or other. “I was worried you might leave before I caught you!”

“After you’d called me out by name? Leaving would be rude,” Rose says.

“Yes, well-” She fumbles with the arm full of flyers, nearly managing to spill them in her haste. Eridan looks profoundly embarrassed, and Feferi holds out a piece of paper. “You’re a busy bee, Rose, I can never seem to track you down! If we weren’t such good fronds I’d _almost_ think you were avoiding me!”

Feferi laughs, and Rose is left with nothing to do but smile like she’s just told a fantastic joke. “Lucky we’re such good friends, then, isn’t it?”

“I’ve been _trying_ to catch you so I can ask for your help.” Feferi gestures with the paper again, almost cartoonishly exaggerated, an obvious gesture for Rose to take it. Because she gets the feeling that taking it will streamline the process enormously, Rose obliges. “Just read the flyer, it’s all right there. I really think it sounds like your kind of thing!”

The flyer depicts an ordinary trash can, covered in what looks like a colorfully knitted blanket. It is a testament to Feferi’s inexhaustible creative energy, that she has made this, and her inexhaustible trust fund- that she had the money on hand to print all of these color. The title reads, in offensively magenta bubble text:

YARN BOMBS AWAY! (Meetings 7:00-8:30, Tuesdays.)

“I assume you are not asking after my more magical services,” Rose is forced to clarify.

“Oh, no, no no,” Feferi says, voice suddenly lowering as if she is embarrassed. “Nothing like that, of course, I wouldn’t- _you know_ ! I stay on the right side of the law all the time, solemnly swear. Not that there’s anyfin wrong with it either, Rose, I understand that it’s a way of life! I’m not a _snitch_ , I’m not going to rat anyone out for.. _magic_.”

She says magic like she is liable to be dragged through the streets for even daring to utter the word. Rose raises her eyebrows.

“No, I just want you to hang out and knit with us. It’s not illegal or anything!” This is exactly as much a relief to Rose as it would be to _any_ unlicensed caster-for-hire. Feferi (who appears to have recovered from the culture shock) leans in, like she is sharing a secret. “ _Technically_ , the city isn’t supposed to let us do it, but.. I pulled a few strings, I have it on personal assurance that we won’t get arrested or anyfin silly like that. I know that the last time didn’t go _so_ well, but I’m sure if you show up-”

This is all that Rose needs to hear. She passes the flyer back to Feferi, pursing her lips in an expression of faux regret. “I prefer not to knit where I may later put my garbage.”

“Oh.” Feferi pouts. “Well, are you sure? Look, Rose, I know that you aren’t really a ‘community outreach’ kind of gal, let’s get glubbing real, but-”

And here it comes.

Rose is unable to stop the inevitable downwards curl of her lip, just as she is helpless to reach out and put her hand over Feferi’s mouth and force her to stop there. There is such a fine line between her _normal_ idiocy and the sort of idiocy that has the potential to ruin Rose’s day. There is a very specific sort of idiocy that (even preemptively) makes her blood run hot.

“-It would be good for you, I think,” Feferi says, voice nearly dripping with compassion (as if she has a single of iota of understanding with which to temper her tone!), and reaches out to put one perfectly manicured hand on Rose’s arm. With a cold sort of detachment, Rose observes the fuschia bangles on her wrist. “I _know_ you’ve got to be taking Kanaya’s death hard, we _all_ are, but all this being alone fishiness, it’s just not healthy! I think it’s times like this that it’s important to surround yourself with friends...”

In fact, Rose is not taking Kanaya’s death ‘hard’. She is coping about as well as any girl whose girlfriend has suffered an untimely death could, and this is well. She has only cried once so far, and has managed so far to resist the urge to fling herself under the wheels of a passing car. There is no amount of good that a glass of wine in the evening can do for taking one’s mind off something like that. While Rose is not nearly stupid enough to say she will ever forget Kanaya, she is confident that this is something she will be able to move past.

Eridan Ampora, who has been silent as the grave until now, pulls on the fringe of his absurdly ugly scarf and blurts, “Sorry for your loss.”

“I have a prior engagement,” Rose says, aware her mouth is twisted unattractively, and then she leaves.

The quarantine on Kanaya’s apartment- and, admittedly, Rose’s failure ever to find a place of her own may play some part in this- means that Rose has once again been relegated to sleeping on Roxy’s futon. It is not an unfamiliar scenario, but is by no means one that is ideal. She has spent many of her formative years sleeping on Roxy’s futon. Her back knows the slats and the thick cushion well, and her head knows the location of the wooden armrests with reluctant intimacy, but none of this makes Rose herself any more pleased to be back there. It feels like a bit of a kick in the ass to be shunted back to Roxy’s, lost without a girlfriend who will allow her to play at adults with her. In the end, she has never quite successfully grown up.

Rose suspects that there is a conspiracy among her siblings to make sure that she is watched over, and that Roxy is also meant to be functioning as caretaker. It is ridiculous, quite frankly. She is adjusting to the death of her girlfriend with as much sensibility and maturity as any young lady could be expected to do.

“How much would I have to pay you to fly yourself and Karkat down here to have a drink with me?” she says into her phone, head tipped onto the black futon’s back.

“More’n your fucking life is worth,” Dave replies, and in the background Rose hears dishes clattering. He is in his kitchen, then, and someone (doubtless, Karkat) is banging around in the background. Then they are the sort of couple who eat off actual _china_. What a deadly bore. “You know I don’t do planes anymore, Rose, I’m scarred for life. Summer of 2008- fucking tragic, really, how a man’s future can be altered forever by a pack of airline peanuts-”

“Fucking tragic,” Rose agrees, and tucks her feet under her.

“Woulda flown down,” he keeps going, “You know I would have, it’s just-”

“I know.” She rolls her eyes; she loves her brother dearly, but thinks she could do without the unnecessary apology. “But Karkat was on his deathbed, and could not be left alone to fend off whatever dreadful illness he contracted, and would have felt even worse if you’d left him alone to attend his friend’s funeral, and he was probably just devastated about it to begin with. If I could concoct a similarly compelling excuse not to attend, I’d have skipped too.”

“It was that freaky thing troll pneumonia thing,” Dave says by way of explanation. “Infected secondary bronchial secondary tracts. Gnarly as fuck.”

“Fuck Karkat’s secondary bronchial tracts,” she says.

There is the wet sound of a palm being placed over the phone’s speakers. Rose hears Dave shouting to wherever Karkat is, muffled. “Rose was askin’ after your health!”

It is easy to conjure up the image of Dave sitting in a brand spanking new apartment- or an apartment which is not brand spanking new, but which is at the very least clean and also his- at a table in his new kitchen. It is also absurdly easy to imagine Karkat puttering around in the background, incurably anal retentive as always, and shouting at Dave to use the plates. They are doubtless the image of newly-moved-in bliss. In a month, they will be eating takeout from the boxes, but right now she imagines that even the toaster must be gleaming. It is all very sickening.

Likely under the impression that Rose has gone suddenly deaf and cannot hear him shouting, Karkat yells; “Tell Rose I know she’s being a passive-aggressive witch right now, and she can stuff it!”

“Karkat says thank you,” Dave says to her.

“I don’t want to listen to you two flirt with each other,” she complains, because she doesn’t want to listen to them flirting with each other even a little. “In fact, imagining your domestic bliss is making me a little sick to my stomach. You’re committing a crime against humanity at this very moment.”

“Yeah, alright, lemme call off the nukes.” There is the briefest pause while Dave taps something against his table. “How are you doing, Rose?”

“Failing to keep myself busy.” Rose tucks her feet up under her, lips pursing in an expression of distinct displeasure. “In general, contemplating whether my ethics prevent me from throwing away what remains of my life-”

“What ethics?” Dave interrupts her, which Rose thinks is good because otherwise she may have inadvertently told Dave of her deep and overwhelming desire to track down Kanaya’s murderer and do the deed herself. “Man, you gotta stop spouting this shit.”

“What ethics, indeed.”

“You’re right about failing to keep yourself busy, Rose, you’re starting to stagnate. Gettin’ ideas about morals and shit. Why don’t you go hang out with Dirk? Sure he’ll have a drink with you.”

“He’s a bad influence on me,” Rose says, which is true. Also true is, “And I don’t know where he lives now.”

“Slippery little fuck,” Dave sighs. “Neither do I.”

They commiserate this fact together in silence for a moment, Rose slouched over in a manner hardly befitting a young lady of any stature and standing. It is very, very, silly, but she wishes that Dave were back in Serenity with all the rest of them right now. She wishes that her twin had never left.

“I miss you, Dave,” she says eventually. “I must say, moving away was quite a stupid decision.”

“I miss you too, Rose,” he replies, after a pause just long enough to be significant. It makes her feel better, even if she suspects that she is currently getting the short end of this particular stick.

Dave has to leave for dinner. He is now several hours behind Rose, and while she is already in her pajamas, he is just sitting down. It is strange that her brother is now nearly on the other side of the country, and that she can no longer walk the several blocks to his apartment whenever she pleases- not that she’d ever been particularly given to spontaneous visits, but the _option_ had been nice, and now that it is gone she feels it keenly. It hadn’t been so bad back when she’d been living with Kanaya, well and occupied, but now it feels rather like she’s been cut loose and set adrift.

Rose spends the rest of the evening with her cheek propped against the futon and her laptop balanced on one knee, a glass of wine in her hand, while Roxy flits in and out and chatters at the top of her lungs.

“She’s such a _bitch_ ,” Roxy says, and sets down several thick candles on her coffee table, which is a pane of glass stacked atop several books (one of which Rose distinctly recalls gifting her sister in the hopes she’d _read_ it, god forbid) and a couple boxes. They are cream white, tall, and smell of vanilla. “I mean, it’s not even like I’m a _bad fucking tenant_ , yanno- I’m quiet! I don’t throw parties! Not _too_ many parties, anyway, but who’s gonna blame me for having a little fun-”

“Perhaps she objects to the constant noisy state of your fire alarm,” Rose says mildly, which apparently reminds Roxy to throw open her window.. She does so with a _bang_.

There is an official memo to the public from Serenity’s police department on Rose’s feed, which reads:

Any information which leads to the capture of the individual or individuals who have been taking remains from local cemeteries will be rewarded. Rewards of up to 2000 dollars, depending on the validity of the tip. Call 737-6489.

Remains of sentient species are notoriously volatile. Dispose of your loved ones properly.

Roxy is still talking about her neighbor, a friendly troll who owns the bookstore beneath the flat. “She’s so _stuck up_ ,” Roxy complains, and smashes a black copper bowl into the center of the candles. It clangs against the glass alarmingly. “Every time I pass her she gives me this _look_ like I’m just… just-”

“Just a street witch?” Rose suggests.

“Well, I am!” Roxy, looking defensive, whips out her matchbook. "Not like she's got any fucking right to judge, is it? It's not like what she does is any more legal anyhow, just cause she gets it out of a pretty book."

"Where is the solidarity amongst criminals these days?"

"Not fuckin' here," Roxy says, and purses her lips as if in disappointment. It is intensely misleading, Rose thinks, considering the enthusiasm with which Roxy reciprocates her neighbor's antagonism. "I try and try, and what do I get but a hex on my faucet."

"She really is rather unfair," Rose agrees, because she owes her sister that much at least.

"If I could get another apartment for such a good price I'd do it," Roxy laments. "But ain't anywhere in this dumb town with such a good view. So I guess I'm stuck with the bitch."

“Perhaps you could obtain a box of blue sprites with which to plague her.” Rose squints at the image on her screen, which is of a fine wire mesh box, containing perhaps twenty-five or thirty glowing blue lights. It certainly does appear to be the genuine article, and someone has gone to a lot of trouble to catch the little fuckers, but Rose cannot imagine why anyone would _want_ to. “Bongwater87 only wants 50 bucks for them,” she says idly, “Though I must admit, I cannot personally vouch for the quality of his merchandise.”

To her credit, Roxy appears to consider this carefully, before telling Rose, “Sure, send me the link.”

While Roxy lights the candles carefully, Rose messages her sister with the link to the dubious sale. Just underneath, there is a cheery post declaring its writer to be:

Just an amateur witch looking to start a coven to practice spells with! Would really like to meet once or twice a week, just so we can cast together and share tips- and I’ll bring refreshments! Message for details if you’re ready to get SERIOUS about your spellcasting!

:D :D :D

Rose thinks, amused, it is the stupidest cop alive.

“Okay,” Roxy says loudly, and holds one unlit match up, like it is a weapon of mass destruction she holds between her fingers. She looks unusually haggard, blonde-and-pink hair scraped back into a ponytail, and eyeliner smudged. Perhaps this is typical wear for her late-night casting sessions; perhaps she has also been having a rough time of it. Rose has spent an embarrassingly small amount of time cultivating the overlap between their interests, and thus does not know. “Okay, Rosie, watch out.”

Rose gathers her laptop closer, just in case of any stray sparks. Roxy strikes the match, lighting it easily, and drops it into the copper bowl. There is a loud _crack_. From the bowl, a tall blue flame flares out, and briefly illuminates every inch of Roxy’s face in striking cerulean.

This done, she begins the incantation. Rose sips at her drink.

Rose’s morning tradition goes like this: She exits Roxy’s flat, which is usually devoid of any meaningful food supply, sometimes with coffee, sometimes with a bagel, sometimes with both but usually with neither. At the bottom of the stairs, at the second landing, she usually runs into Aranea Serket, who is, despite all of Roxy’s bluster, a generally friendly troll girl with a bit of a fondness for talking. She exchanges a few words with Aranea Serket (which occasionally turns into many words) while they walk, and then she leaves, either to find herself a proper cafe or to go about the rest of her business. Sometimes this business is actual business; more frequently, it involves wandering the city for an hour before she tires of attempting to pretend she has any business there anymore, and goes back home. It used to involve accompanying Kanaya to work, or exchanging the occasional barbed pleasantry with Jade Harley (the other half of Solarium flowers), but this is a thing of the past these days.

Rather, she gets her fill of daily interaction from Aranea Serket and company.

Once or twice, Aranea has asked Rose to step with her into the Library of Alexandria, which is exactly as pompous a name for a bookstore as one would expect from Aranea Serket, in order to show her a new tome or collection she has unearthed from somewhere or other. Presumably, she thinks more highly of Rose than she does of her sister, though Rose has no idea whether or not she ought to feel flattered by this. It is hard to feel flattered by the fact that Aranea likes her, when she suspects Roxy would view this as a betrayal of the highest caliber. One simply does not form a peaceful acquaintanceship with one's sister's worst enemy.

Once, in the two weeks succeeding Kanaya's funeral, Rose catches sight of Vriska Serket outside of Aranea’s door. The notoriously elusive beast (thank the gods!) does not force upon Rose the trouble of actually talking to her. She just casts her an askance look, scowls, and takes off in a flurry of messy hair and oversized jacket. Kanaya always used to complain about the size of the horrible thing.

Interestingly enough, it is two weeks since Kanaya's funeral to the date, when Aranea turns to Rose on the way down the stairs together. "Rose," she begins, looking particularly enthused by whatever she has to say, "You have to come into the store with me, just for a minute. If you have no pressing other engagements, of course- I can certainly wait- but I can't think of anyone who will appreciate what I've found quite as well as you. I waited to see if I could catch you last night, but, well, I became rather busy rather quickly, you see..."

Rose, who has rather vivid memories of Aranea cursing Roxy's curtains so that they snared passerby by the ankles, raises her eyebrows. "You don't say."

"Nevertheless," says Aranea, who is a font of good cheer even in the face of shame, "I do think you'll like it. I don't know if I've told you this before, Rose, but it is so nice to have someone around who really appreciates the value of a rare spellbook."

(As a matter of fact, Aranea has told Rose this before.)

"I don't know what I'd do without someone to show me the latest copies of every tome of necromancy, cryptomancy, and summoning currently in publication," Rose replies. "I suspect I would begin to waste away without a steady diet of nefarious magical know-how. Doubtless, both our lives are exponentially improved by knowing one another."

Aranea pulls her keys from her pocket, as they come to a stop in front of the door. For a long moment, she struggles with the lock. "These stupid old keys never work. If only I could hire someone to get in here and fix these damn locks- there's something to be said for history, of course, but this is simply ridiculous!"

Rose, who knows a locking jinx when she sees one, only nods noncommittally.

When Aranea manages to get the door open, presumably by wearing the lock down so much that it gives up on trying to keep her out, the store is cool and dead inside. They emerge to the side of the narrow counter where Aranea tends the register, amidst a veritable forest of overstocked bookshelves, the only light from the street spilling in. Aranea spares a second to yank on the chain that dangles just besides the door, and illuminates the room in a soft yellow glow. Rose occasionally approaches something like being impressed by the amount of mileage that she has gotten out of such a small space- after all, not everyone is capable of so masterfully creating such a maze of a store. It is, doubtless, the most dense population of books to be found on any map of the literary population.

"Right back here," Aranea says, and promptly disappears between two tall oak shelves.

The unfortunate fact of the matter is that Rose does not have anything better to do with her time than listen to Aranea prattle about her newest find. Actually having the time to listen to Aranea Serket is so unfortunate, in fact, that Rose takes a second to lament her lack of a life, and to remember the days when she did have better things to do. Scoot over, death of a treasured girlfriend; these are the sorts of things that can really get a girl down.

Rose follows Aranea down the narrow aisle of books shortly, eyes roving across the perfect spines. "I'm going to be very disappointed if this book doesn't contain exact instructions for the revival of my dear mother," she remarks. "You could make a mint by selling the secrets to life and death, you know."

"Now, I never promised the secrets to life and death." Aranea, still sounding irrationally pleased with herself, stops between the two shelves. She traces the spines of the books in front of her with careful fingers. "Just some of their higher disciplines, maybe."

Despite herself, Rose is hooked. She is forced to crowd in next to Aranea in order to even come close to seeing what she is doing- because of course, she could not simply deign to lower herself a little in order to allow Rose to peer over her shoulder. Inconsiderate as all fuck, mind, but Rose still leans in. Shoulder to shoulder with Aranea, she watches her rifle through the books.

"Oh dear," Aranea says with a frown, and slides her glasses up her nose.

"Oh dear?" Rose repeats.

"Vriska, that meddling-"

A bell peals rather loudly, interrupting Aranea in the middle of whatever accusation she had been about to make. She falls silent, quite clearly shocked, and then:

"Hello!" calls Aradia Megido. "I hope you don't mind, the door was unlocked!"

"Of course it was," Aranea grumbles.

"Hello," Rose calls back, because it seems the only appropriate thing to do.

"Where are you guys?" Although Rose cannot see Aradia, it is easy to hear her as she moves through the store, scooting books around. There is the sound of wooden legs scraping across the floor. She shouts, "I can't see you- oh! Hello!"

Aradia peers around the corner of the shelf, having apparently managed to locate them, and waves at them both with stunning enthusiasm. It is far too early in the morning to be so excited, Rose decides, but with Aradia she is never quite sure how seriously to take her. This makes it difficult to hate her for things like inappropriately early cheer. "So you've found us," Rose congratulates her. "A job well done."

"It's nice to see you, Rose," she says, and (much to Aranea's chagrin) begins the process of squishing herself in on Rose's other side. She is wider than either of them, and also has exponentially larger amounts of hair. This makes for a cramped cranny. "How are you doing these days?"

“Quite well, thank you,” Rose tells her, and is promptly hit in the side by Aranea’s elbow. “Very nice to see you among the living,” Rose says, and nods to Aradia. “You look positively radiant under the light of day.”

“Oh, it’s nice to be out among the living sometimes.” Aradia winks to her, like she has just told an especially funny joke. “Dead people _never_ tell me how nice I’m looking. It seems to be an exclusively mortal affectation!”

“I believe it.” Charmed despite herself, Rose smiles. “It seems that dying strips one of any desire to continue participating in meaningless rituals of courtesy. Who’d have thought.”

“I shall just have to refuse to talk to them unless they say hello politely first,” Aradia says decisively.

“ _Ahem_ .” Aranea, who is evidently not pleased to be crammed against the shelf, clears her throat. “This talk of spirits is all very nice, but if you wouldn’t _mind_ , I believe you were here for-”

“Oh, yes. The manual on preservation of-”

“Quite,” says Aranea snippishly. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to get them to you and out of my shop- so that I can open properly, of course.” She flattens herself against the shelf, glasses gone awry in the fray, and awkwardly tries to squeeze past Rose without making full body contact. It’s a hopeless endeavor, but Rose admires her persistence. After a rather uncomfortable encounter between Aranea’s elbow and her right breast, the troll pops free.

“Come along, Ms. Megido,” she says, and flattens out her skirt. “I haven’t all day!”

“Do ignore her,” Rose whispers to Aradia, who looks mostly unfazed. “She’s having a bad day.” 

With Aranea completely and thoroughly distracted from whatever she’d been so eager to show Rose, and Aradia busy retrieving whatever she’d come to the bookstore for, Rose is free to continue on her way.

She escapes mostly unscathed from Aranea’s clutches, with the benefit of knowing that inside the shop Aranea is serving Aradia Megido. Upon leaving she purchases her daily morning coffee, which is mostly chocolate syrup and whipped cream anyway, and then she is merrily on her way. As far as mornings go, it is rather auspicious.

Outside of Solarium Flowers, which Rose finds her path crossing more often than not- whether a consequence of the store’s location or a manifestation of her own subconscious desires, she is unqualified to fairly judge- Feferi Peixes is standing, in some ungodly ensemble that includes a vividly colored wrap skirt. She looks like a parrot in earrings. It is evidence of the good day that Rose is having that Feferi does not have seem to have noticed her- rather, she seems embroiled in some sort of personal dilemma, wringing her hands and hopping from foot to foot like the sidewalk is hot under her sandals.

Feferi catches sight of Rose before she can slip past, but this is less of a blight on her day than it might otherwise be, solely because she is curious. “ _Hello_ , Rose!” she cries, and brightens. “Gosh! Fancy seeing you out here!”

Rose agrees, “You might even begin to suspect me of living in the area.”

She laughs, maybe even more boisterously than usual. “You’re _hilarious_ , Rose, I’ve totally missed talking to you! You never-”

“What are you doing out here?” inquires Rose, and gestures towards Solarium Flowers’s fading green storefront. It is dark inside, which is unusual enough, since Jade is the type who tends to rise with the sun. “You seem agitated.”

“Huh?” Feferi twists one of her bangles around her wrist, eyes flicking to the store title. “Oh, here?” She laughs again. “I’m just waiting for a friend, no big deal! You know, I totally just realized- this was Kanaya’s shop, wasn’t it? What a strange coincidence!”

Rose lifts an eyebrow. “Indeed.”

Feferi takes Rose by the arm (a gross violation of her personal space, quite frankly) as if they are old friends. “You never came to any of my meetings, Rose!” she says, an undeniable whine in her voice. “I was _really_ hoping you would-”

Before Rose can seize the opportunity to shove Feferi off of her, possibly causing her grave injury in the process, Jade Harley comes out of the shop. “Feferi, I have your lavender,” she says, looking uncharacteristically displeased about this. “If you’re- oh!”

Jade looks from Feferi to Rose, brown lips forming a small ‘o’. Her eyes have gone similarly round. It is an undeniably youthful expression- Rose finds that she resents it just a little.

“Rose, what a surprise!” She deposits the stalks of lavender, strong enough that Rose can smell it even from several feet away, into an apron pocket. Rose is not sure if she means to sound so skeptical when she asks, “What are you doing around here?”

“Out for a walk,” Rose explains, while Feferi releases her, looking rather sheepish. “And you?”

“Well, I work here, silly,” says Jade, some of her usual good cheer regained. “You know that! Although, gosh, it is so busy with just me… Feferi was just buying something!”

Rose purses her lips together tightly, taking in Feferi’s expression like she has just been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. “I didn’t know you were friends.

“We’re _great_ friends,” Feferi says cheerily.

At the same time, Jade says, “Oh, no, we’re not really.”

“I see,” Rose says to the pair.

Seeming to recognize that they have just made a frankly uncorrectable blunder, Jade presses her lips together until they seem to form a straight line. Feferi looks as if she might protest not being acknowledged as Jade’s friend, but she (wisely) keeps her mouth shut too. Jade shoves the stalks of lavender in Feferi’s direction. “Just take these, Feferi,” she demands, brusque. “I have loads more to do today.”

“If you need help, I don’t really have anything to do today!” Feferi drops the lavender into her bag. She looks back at Rose. “I would totally love to hang out-”

Jade sets her hands on her hips. “Actually, weren’t you saying before you had something to do, Feferi?”

“Was I?” Feferi asks.

“ _Yes_.” Jade lifts her unruly eyebrows, voice more like a shove than a nudge. “You were saying you needed that lavender for-”

“Oh, right!” Feferi smiles prettily at Rose, a seeming reconciliation. “I have a horrible mosquito problem. Can’t get rid of the stupid buggers. I’d better go and put these in a vase- they say this stuff is supposed to keep them away!””

“They do say that,” Rose agrees, and waves goodbye to Feferi as she flounces away.

When she has melted back into the sparse crowds, Jade heaves an enormous sigh, turning back to Rose. “Thank _goodness_ ,” she says, looking more tired than anything. She fixes Rose with a knowing look, as if they are co-conspirators. “I am so sorry about that, Rose!”

Rose is not sure that she really appreciates this show of solidarity from Jade Harley, especially when the whole scene seems so very staged. “She has a long history of assaulting me on the streets,” she says anyway, because if Jade intends to use some fake encounter to get in Rose’s good graces, she can give just as good. “Usually with all manner of absurd requests. It’s simply a fact of my life at this point.”

Jade giggles, exposing a set of rather endearing buck teeth. “I guess you totally needed a knight to swoop in and save you, huh?”

“A good thing you arrived when you did,” Rose says, even.

Something about how close Jade is standing begins to put her on edge, making the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. If she was inclined to be unkind, she would describe what Jade is doing as looming, so it is good for her, really, that she is inclined to be unkind and is perfectly free to describe Jade in this way. She smells exactly how Kanaya did when coming home after a long day at work.

“Rose,” Jade says quietly, presumably to avoid causing a scene. “I haven’t seen you since the funeral. You never stopped by, which is so dumb. I have been waiting for you to drop in!”

“Why would I drop in?” she asks, perhaps a little meanly.

“Well-” Jade gestures to the store, just to their right, in a huge gesture. “It’s Kanaya’s store, Rose! Mine too, I guess, but she loved this place. And I know she really loved you, and I think _we_ were pretty good friends too.”

Rose, with ice in her gut, does not see the relevance. “Is there something that you’re trying to get at?”

“What I’m trying to say is that it’s kind of like.. This is what’s left, you know? You, and me, and her store.” Jade speaks earnestly, like she genuinely believes what she is saying, even. “I completely get it that you’ve been avoiding coming in, or talking to me, I’m sure you don’t want to be reminded-”

“It’s a little difficult to practice avoidance, when you insist on reminding me,” she says sharply. “How could I possibly be successful at it?”

Jade huffs, almost comical. “I’m just trying to be a good friend, Rose!”

We are _not_ friends, Rose thinks, and finds it difficult to avoid keeping some of the anger she feels off of her face. Jade Harley is not her friend and has never been her friend- she has never cared about her, really, has only made a show of facetious friendliness for Kanaya’s benefit. Maybe she feels bad for her, maybe she revels in seeing the absolute sham that Rose’s life has become. Whatever the reason for her attempts at friendship, Rose does not _want_ them.

“Then I suppose that you’ve fulfilled your duty, haven’t you?” She scowls at her. “You’ve told me how to go about recovering.”

“You are being way too fucking difficult about this,” Jade says, folding her arms across her chest. “I know you’re not taking any of the stuff I said to heart!”

“She was _my_ girlfriend.” If this is petty, Rose cannot bring herself to care. “I’ll get over it however I want.”

“Fine then!” Jade tosses her arms up like she is done with the matter. “I hope you do get over it however you want!”

“Thank you, I will.”

“I hope you are very happy, Rose!” she says, and it is the most venomous well-wishing that Rose has ever received.

Jade turns around, obviously sulking about the entire affair, and throws back open the doors to Solarium Flowers. She is hailed by a set of tinkling wind chimes, and behind her, the door closes with a creak. It is only seconds later that the lights blink on.

Rose, deeply unsettled and her morning thoroughly ruined, decides to go back home.

But, of course, nothing is ever really that simple- where one bad turn comes along, others are sure to follow. This is a principle that the most superstitious casters would follow religiously, and a principle that Rose generally considers to be hogwash: if the universe wants to screw her, the universe will do it without any artifice, she is quite sure. Rose is only steps away from the door to the Library of Alexandria when she is approached by a somber-looking policeman.

The sight of the police has never been a particularly encouraging one, and little about the way that Kanaya’s investigation has been handled makes Rose inclined to change her mind. The policeman doffs his hat, approaching her with an expression nearing on sheepish.

It is just in the same vein, and Rose isn’t entirely humorless when she says, “I don’t suppose you are here to ask me a few more questions.”

As it so happens, they are not there to ask her a few more questions.

The entire unpleasant affair of Kanaya’s murder investigation, an arduous and painful affair that has been dragged out for weeks (generously, one would call it months), is over within the span of five minutes. Having decided that there was no one else with the motivation to kill Kanaya, and having deduced that Kanaya herself was a practitioner of magic (fairly obvious, though Kanaya’s brand of magic involved the sort of petty hedge witchery that most respectable witches would scoff at) and therefore could have summoned herself the thing that did her in, the case is closed. The death has been diagnosed an accident, the fault of a young caster in over her head. A tragedy, mainly, and a warning.

She is not quite surprised at the failure of the police to find whoever has murdered Kanaya. The truth is that she has never really expected justice for Kanaya- if it was ever going to be found- to come this way. If Rose wants justice, it will have be justice she metes out herself.

So Rose’s mood is fairly black as she climbs the stairs to Roxy’s flat.

“Hello, Rose,” Roxy says when Rose opens the door, looking flushed and very out of breath. Behind her, Aranea Serket is standing, looking a bit more put together but equally put out. “How are you?”

“Hello, Rose- don’t try to change the subject, Roxy,” Aranea snaps, barely sparing a glance for Rose. “We are going to settle this right here, I don’t care if-”

“I’m fucking _trying_ to say hello to my little fucking sister, Aranea!” Roxy nearly yells, voice climbing in volume. She gestures to Rose, wildly, even as she turns away from her. “Could you put being a godawful bitch on hold for _thirty fucking seconds_ , thank you!”

“Rose can wait,” Aranea says primly, “But I can’t. You really have outdone yourself this time, Roxy-”

“Oh, please,” Rose sighs, tired and fed up. “Do you two really have to be so awful all the time?”

Aranea presses her lips together, two spots of color rising high on her cheeks. “Your _sister_ ,” she begins, “Has set loose an entire flock of those horrible little, blue, fluorescent sprites-”

“You have no goddamn proof!” Roxy yells. To her credit, she looks appropriately insulted at even the mere accusation. Rose would be more impressed if she didn’t so much want her to _shut up._ “I’m sorry, Rose,” she says, at a more respectable volume. “How was your day?”

“They’ve declared Kanaya’s death an accident,” Rose says, and drops her bag with a _fwump_. “Or a suicide, I suppose.”

There are a few phrases capable of instantly quieting down a room, and it turns out that this is one of them. Roxy looks at her, face the very picture of shock, black-painted lips in a perfect O. Even Aranea has the good grace to shut up and look appropriately surprised. The silence lasts for a blissful thirty seconds, perhaps, while Rose toes off her sneakers- and then Roxy breaks it. “They’re saying that she did it herself?”

There is really no excuse for what Rose says next, except that she is very tired, and does not want Roxy to give her that weepy look, and does not want Aranea to open her incessantly flapping mouth again. Mostly, she wants a little peace. “Perhaps I shall kill myself too,” she says, meanly.

“Oh, Rosie…” Roxy says, voice sounding very nearly teary, and she takes two steps forward.

“I am going to lay down,” Rose announces, and leaves the room as quickly as she can.

While Rose languishes on the black futon, bone-weary and missing Kanaya with an ache that she cannot really fathom the shape of, Roxy and Aranea continue their discussion in the other room. She believes that she hears her name pass by. Doubtless, they are discussing her, and the matter of her frivolous suicide threat. Her sister, no doubt, will be wanting to call someone: to stage some sort of intervention, as if Rose just needs to be reminded she is not alone in the world. Aranea will be thinking that they ought to have her committed. Neither of them will know whether or not Rose meant it. They will undoubtedly find a way to argue even over this.

Well, let them, Rose thinks, staring at the patterns of light on the ceiling. All that she wants to do is sleep.

But this is a matter that sleep will not be able to fix. When she wakes up, the flat is silent as the grave and dark but for a sliver of light from the window, and _something_ swells and overflows, and it hits her that this is it.

This is her life now. She will be here on Roxy's couch forever, alone and just as miserable, with no one to even help her pretend to be a person. She will spend night after night laying here, Roxy's ugly wizard lamp casting long shadows across the room, staring at the ceiling and missing Kanaya. Day after day listening to her sister and Aranea Serket bitch about the most inconsequential things, so absorbed in the pettiness of their day-to-day drama. Roxy only tolerating her for the sake of gloating over Rose's failure, Dave and Karkat gone to live happy and meaningful lives without her, Kanaya-

Day after day spent reminded constantly of Kanaya and the aching edges of her absence. Strangers who pretend to know Rose, to have known Kanaya, who think it is their right or duty to remind her. Consolations that mean nothing and offers of friendship she has never fucking wanted. In time they will forget, most likely, and the memories of Kanaya will peel away like so many layers of flaky paint, but even if they do, Rose will not.

Oh God, thinks Rose, with a kind of helpless despair. _I can't live without her._

It is as if she's been underwater and upon breaching the surface, hair wet and running, the cold sunlight has blinded her. She cannot keep her eyes open. She cannot think, cannot even really process how much it aches, her ribcage and her lungs and her heart, which she has always presumed to be romantic nonsense but which she now knows is true. Kanaya had reached into her chest, nails a flawlessly smooth evergreen, and gotten her talons into every last bit of her, and now in her absence Rose no longer knows how she ought to breathe. Rose has been, for far too long, nothing but an offshoot, a leech, a parasitic weed tangled up in Kanaya's roots. She had always been the best part of Rose.

Her first reaction is one of nearly blinding anger- anger at Kanaya, who had of course been the one to bring her down. The witch, she thinks, had the audacity to make me love her, and then kick the bucket and leave me stranded here without her. If she had done it intentionally Rose would be able to forgive her for it, but knife's real twist, the mean edge of it, is that Kanaya didn't even need to try. It's one thing to ruin someone's life when you're trying, but this- this kind of betrayal is another kind of monster. It is enough to make her want to tear at her hair, except that she thinks that the sort of emotional theatrics she wants to engage in would just embarrass her. She does not beat her chest, she does not pick up Roxy's dreadful lamp and hurl it to the floor, despite how violently Rose wants to hear the stupid thing shatter. She is not quite surprised at herself, but she is a little ashamed.

Because of course, Kanaya didn't mean to die. She'd loved Rose, and this is one of the few things Rose knows. It had felt like she was the only person in the world who loved her, and now she is gone. She's been taken by some idiot with half a brain and a knack for black magic.

 _I will kill him_ , Rose thinks, and she means it as much as she possibly can, and then she thinks: _I will not do this without her._

She gropes for her phone, and then she texts Dave.

tentacleTherapist [TT] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at [ 4:08:32 AM ]   
TT: Dave, I need your help.  
turntechGodhead is an idle chum !   
TT: I understand the need for sleep frequently supersedes the needs of your family members, but the matter is of some urgency.  
TT: Dire urgency, in fact.  
TT: If you could drag your gargantuan posterior out of bed- though I recognize it must be hard to prise yourself from your warmth and comfort, especially for something as silly as your sister’s earnest and heartfelt pleas- I would be much obliged.  
TT: I need you to help me dig up Kanaya’s grave.  
turntechGodhead is no longer an idle chum !   
TG: rose what the fuck  
TT: Good. You’re awake.  
TG: yeah im awake why are you blowing up my phone  
TG: its four in the goddamn am  
TG: why am i being prised from the grip of my bfs loving arms  
TT: Go on, rub it in.  
TT: At least you still _have_ a boyfriend whose arms you can sleep in.  
TG: ok guilt trip successful what do you want  
TT: I told you, I need your help.  
TG: oh you mean for the thing about digging up kanayas grave  
TG: hm let me think about it  
TG: get out of bed and attend to rose because she says shes going to dig up her gfs grave  
TG: or do not that and go back to sleep rn and tell rose to stop being a creep  
TG: im not helping you fuel your inner necrophiliac  
TG: this joke is super not funny  
TT: It’s not supposed to be funny.  
TT: I’m asking you seriously.  
TT: I need you to help me dig up her grave.  
TG: rose are you ok  
TG: this is kind of  
TG: uh  
TG: fucking weird  
TT: Perfectly fine.  
TT: In fact, I would say that I am doing better tonight than I have been in a very long while.  
TT: I just need your help.  
TG: ok  
TG: hold on im waking up karkat  
turntechGodhead ceased pestering tentacleTherapist 

carcinoGeneticist [CG] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] at [ 4:19:03 AM ]  
CG: ROSE, I UNDERSTAND THAT YOU HAVE BEEN UNDER A LOT OF EMOTIONAL STRESS LATELY, AND I KNOW THAT YOU MISS KANAYA.  
CG: IT’S NORMAL TO MISS SOMEONE YOU LOVE WHEN THEY’RE GONE.  
CG: HELL, ***I*** MISS KANAYA TOO, ROSE.  
CG: SHE WAS PRETTY MUCH THE BEST PERSON ON THIS STUPID DAMP DIRT LUMP OF A PLANET AND SHE'S GONE AND I GUESS NOW I'M STUCK WITH THE REST OF THE IDIOTS ITCHING THEIR OWN ASSHOLES AND SMELLING THEIR OWN EXCREMENT.  
CG: BUT DIGGING UP HER GRAVE IS NOT THE ANSWER.  
CG: IT'S JUST KIND OF FUCKED UP.  
CG: LIKE SERIOUSLY, FUCKED UP!.  
CG: I MEAN, IT WAS TOTALLY BOUND TO HAPPEN THAT YOU WOULD SNAP SOMEHOW, WHAT WITH YOUR NIGH FUCKING CONSTANT REFUSAL TO ACTUALLY SIT DOWN WITH SOMEONE AND ***TALK*** ABOUT THIS SHIT. NOT TO MENTION, I KIND OF FEEL LIKE YOU'VE ALWAYS HAD A FEW SCREWS LOOSE. JUST IN THE WAY WHERE YOU SEEM TO HAVE NO ISSUES WITH DIGGING UP YOUR GIRLFRIEND'S BODY.  
CG: BUT THAT DOESN'T MATTER  
CG: WHAT DOES MATTER IS THAT WE ARE FUCKING HERE FOR YOU .  
CG: EVEN IF YOU DON’T WANT TO TALK TO YOUR STUPID SHITHEAD OF A BROTHER, I…  
CG: I DON’T KNOW, MAYBE YOU COULD TALK TO ME?  
CG: ROSE?  
CG: ARE YOU EVEN READING THIS  
tentacleTherapist [TT] ceased pestering carcinoGeneticist [CG]

Rose turns off her phone, watching the screen go black, and then tosses it onto her bed. She won’t need that any more- if Dave won’t help her, then she’s going to do it on her own. It is the way that she does everything now. Maybe there was never any point in asking Dave to help her. Of course, he would not understand.

That’s fine. This is something she is more than capable of doing on her own.

This is how, less than twenty-four hours later, Rose Lalonde comes to be standing in a graveyard, the moon high in the sky over her girlfriend’s grave. It is a rare cloudless night. The sort of night that one instinctually feels would be appropriate to dig up a body on, which is a stroke of fate that Rose feels she can appreciate, and that Kanaya would be sure to appreciate as well- will appreciate, when Rose tells her. The entire graveyard smells of petrichor and cut grass and something cloyingly sweet, like someone has liberally spritzed a floral perfume across the entire plot. She drops her shovel onto the loose dirt.

Her arms are sore and covered in dirt to the elbow. She is sure her hand is blistering something terrible, and blood oozes from a broken nail on her left thumb. This is a small price to pay for resurrecting one’s girlfriend.

There is just one problem with this approach, really.

Kanaya’s body has mysteriously vanished from her casket, leaving nothing but a depression in the white silk. There is not a single hint to indicate that her corpse has ever resided there- not a stray thread, not a strand of hair, not a smudge of green lipstick on the clean white cloth.

She is gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading this! hopefully i won't take as long to write the rest of this fic as i took to write this. hopefully, they'll also be shorter in length. but if you were to leave thoughts, theories, comments, that would be really cool, cause i live for feedback.  
> (also, if you liked it, i'd love if you could leave a kudos.)  
> hope it was enjoyable!


	2. Terezi Pyrope and the Mysterious Case of the Vanishing Corpse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so much for the positive reception!! i'm really glad that people liked the first chapter, and i hope it continues to live up to expectations too. sorry for taking so long to write this- it's been over a month. like i mentioned in the comments section, i've started my first year of college and i'm super busy.

“Here you go,” Nepeta Leijon says proudly, and upends the leather pouch in her hands, sending an array of bone fragments clattering onto her counter. “Genuine Pygmy Plains dragon bone! I tested it myself, you know,” she adds, earnest. “It’s one hundred percent fireproof. No cracks at all.”

Terezi leans her cane against the unfinished wood of Nepeta’s counter, and runs her fingers over the array of tiny bones. They are warm, tiny, deceptively thin, and smooth under her fingertips. As Nepeta has promised, there is not a single crack to be found. Everyone with half their wits about them knows there is one sure-fire way to test the authenticity of dragon bone: to toss it into a flame and see if it cracks. Even the Pygmy Plains dragon, an unnaturally tiny creature with an ugly blunted snout, is able to withstand temperatures that only magical flame can reach.

It has been a lifelong goal of hers to have one for her very own. But because keeping a Pygmy Plains dragon in a populated area is highly illegal, she is forced to settle for their bones.

“It seems your merchandise is legit,” she announces to Nepeta, rolling one fragile wingbone between her thumb and index finger. “Unless this is all a part of some ploy, of course, in which you pass off a collection of ordinary lizard bones as dragon bone, aware that I cannot at this very moment prove you wrong.”

“I would never!” Nepeta leans onto the counter, facetious shock in her voice. “Terezi, don’t you know me better than that?”

“Gaining someone’s trust is the _first_ step to deceiving them.” Terezi leans in to meet her, lips pressed together in an unforgiving line, brow cocked in a manner she is positive is roguish and charming. “I would be quite upset if I discovered I had been bamboozled!”

“Oh, isn’t there anything I can do to purrove I’m not trying to swindle you?” Her words taste honey-sweet.

“I don’t know,” Terezi says. “I am feeling positively hornswoggled.”

Equius Zahhak, who is currently somewhere to their left counting caegars, rolls his eyes and clears his throat pointedly. “A- _hem_.”

Nepeta blows a raspberry at him, and bounces back off the counter, rocking on the balls of her feet. She claps her hands together once. Evidently, being reminded that Equius Zahhak exists is enough to put an end to any sort of playful screwing around between friends. “ _Anyway_ ,” she says, and begins to scrape up the bones, returning them to their pouch. “What do you think, Terezi? They’re the purr-fect size for casting, aren’t they? I can even knock the price down for you some.”

“Sounds an awful lot like you’re playing favorites,” Terezi remarks. This is true, of course. “A rather unethical business model, if you ask me.”

“The _savvy_ shopper ne-fur turns down a deal,” says Nepeta, very wisely.

“I am forced to concede that you are right!” Terezi lifts her cane, and in a show of frustration, knocks the brass head against Nepeta’s counter- hard enough to leave a small dent in the wooden surface. _Whoops_. “My morals will be set aside so that I can accept your grossly biased offer. Name your price, Miss Nepeta Leijon.”

The price that Nepeta gives her is fair enough, for what basically amounts to a novelty. Terezi owns several sets of perfectly serviceable dragon bones, and uses them for casting about as frequently as is to be expected in her line of work. Variety, however, is never remiss: there is always a way to get more precise. Besides, she likes them- even if they do happen to be, in the strictest possible sense, not precisely legal. It’s not like _she_ intends to use them for any nefarious purposes! The psychic resonance of dragon bone simply boosts latent precognitive power- not to mention that precognition is strictly regulated as is.

All the same, Terezi’s purse is a little lighter when she finishes counting out the necessary caegars.

“So.” Nepeta scoops the coins into a neat pile, smelling unabashedly of glee. “How have you been, Terezi?”

“Pretty good, thanks,” says Terezi. She is about average as far going goes, but it is tough to want to complain about the little things to Nepeta. “What about you, Miss Leijon?”

“Planning another hunting trip soon! Equius _insists_ he won’t come with me-”

“And you won’t change my mind by whining,” her moirail says stoically, accompanied by the _ching_ of the cash register closing.

“You should come hunting sometime, Purrezi,” Nepeta says in earnest.

Terezi scrunches up her nose. “Thanks, but I’m not doing that.”

“You’re probably very busy anyway.” Despite how forlorn Nepeta sounds about it, it is sweet that she _thinks_ so. “Are you working on anything exciting? Any cool cases?”

Terezi has not had any cool cases to investigate in ages, it feels like, but it is still rather flattering that a cute girl has such a glamorous opinion of her and her profession. “It’s my opinion that you think my job is much more exciting than it really is,” she tells Nepeta, frankly.

Nepeta giggles sweetly. “Maybe, but I still think it’s cool. What are you planning to do with your new loot?”

There are any number of things that she could tell Nepeta about what she is planning to do with her new loot! The truth is that she will shut herself in the back room of her office, away from her partner’s prying eyes (which are not so much prying as subtly judgemental in a very unpleasant way) and roll varying questions until the novelty wears off. It’s very rarely that Terezi gets the chance to explore the mechanics of fortune-telling to someone who she thinks will actually sit still long enough to listen.

“Maybe I’m just going to head home and ruminate on the future of my love life,” is what comes out of her mouth, instead of anything intelligent.

It is all very embarrassing.

But who cares, really, if she says something embarrassing in front of Nepeta and her odd moirail? The girl likes her- she even giggles when she is flirted with, and it doesn’t sound _too_ much like a pity giggle. It is difficult to feel anything like _bad_ when Nepeta Leijon thinks you are an unknowable deity’s gift to the earth! This is what Terezi finds herself ruminating on, rather than the future of her romantic prospects, as she makes her way from Nepeta’s small shop. Someone else, witnessing her mental process, would most likely question why on earth she would question this to begin with. And if Terezi is honest with herself, she does not quite know either!

The street that Nepeta’s shop opens onto is narrow and crammed with people and stalls. Terezi finds a stall that sells vivid scarves she desperately wants to purchase, but cannot think of anyone who would appreciate them. Nepeta does not seem much like the sort of girl who wears colorful scarves. Jane certainly is not! Terezi does not believe the girl has ever worn a colorful scarf in her life- she seems mostly inclined to khakis and unassuming button-downs. And anyone else- well anyone else is not worth the coin.

She buys a bag of fried red beetles for breakfast instead.

By the time she opens the crinkled and grease-stained bag, she has come to a sort of decision on Nepeta, if a decision needed to be reached. Everything else aside, Terezi thinks it is sometimes nice to be around someone who she is confident likes and admires her.

“Miss Pyrope!” a familiar (and somewhat grating) voice calls after her. “Miss Pyrope, if you have a minute!”

If only good things could last!

But this particular buzzkill is one that she does not feel quite comfortable walking away from, if only because it happens to be Aranea. “Yes, Aranea,” she says, pleasantly, and taps her cane against the stone walkway once. “How can I help you?”

“Thank goodness I ran into you.” Aranea, clearly a bit put out and very flustered, launches into her explanation without so much as a deep breath to prepare. “A rare and rather expensive tome on rites of death, containing _several_ spells I’ve never seen before, has gone missing from my shop- really, this is the second time in as many months a valuable text has gone missing. I am just getting _tired_ of it, Terezi, something must be done about Vriska.”

“Something always needs to be done about Vriska,” Terezi acknowledges. “She is a plague upon the community. But I don’t know what you expect _me_ to do.”

“I don’t suppose you could perhaps fetch the book back for me? If it hasn’t already made its way into the hands of some charlatan.” Aranea sighs. “At least find out what Vriska’s done with it.”

“I think you misunderstand. What do you expect _me_ to do that _you_ can’t? You are constantly narcing on Vriska, and it consistently achieves nothing!”

“She’s always complaining about how much you annoy her,” she offers up, sheepish as if she expects Terezi to be _offended_ by this. “I think she enjoys defying me.”

“Perhaps you could take it to the police and they could _arrest_ her.”

“I’ve considered this too,” Aranea says, unusually short.

“And?” Terezi prods.

“ _And_ I’m not really _exactly_ licensed to own any books on the undead in the first place,” she admits, with the wheedling tone typical to any request she makes. “Besides, you at least have a _chance_ of getting it back without causing a fuss.”

This is a fairly typical request. Like Nepeta, Aranea seems to have a significantly higher opinion of Terezi than she thinks she deserves, and appears to believe that Vriska Serket would actually _listen_ to Terezi! But if she can make a bit of money out of harassing Vriska, then who is she to turn Aranea down?

“You’re aware, of course, that I have a fee,” she reminds her.

Aranea sighs, and forks over several colorful coins. “Just bring it back if you can.”

Terezi pockets the boondollars, a new spring in her step as she leaves Aranea to return to her business, whatever that might be. _She_ seems like the sort of girl who might appreciate a colorful scarf, after all, no matter how completely dull she is otherwise! Unlike her littermate, who has never so much as once worn a skirt. Flirting with cute shopkeepers is all very well and good, but there is nothing quite so energizing as the prospect of shaking down Vriska.

Her mood is, all in all, significantly improved when her phone buzzes.

gutsyGumshoe [GG] began pestering gallowsCalibrator [GC] AT 11:58 AM  
GG: You’re late again.  
GG: I don’t know why I even bother coming to work!  
GG: Every morning I come in to an empty office with the lights off, your fresh and steaming coffee (that I bought with my own money!) in my hands, and there’s no one here to drink it.  
GC: YOU’V3 N3V3R BOUGHT M3 COFF33 1N MY L1F3 >:/  
GG: And a good thing too, since you wouldn’t be there to receive it. :P  
GG: Where are you?  
GC: DO1NG MY SHOPP1NG, I GU3SS  
GC: WH4T’S W1TH THE 1NT3RROG4T1ON?  
GC: 1 4M 4LMOST COMPL3T3LY POS1T1V3 TH4T YOU W1LL SURV1VE L1K3 4NOTH3R HOUR W1THOUT MY 4SS TH3R3 TO W4RM UP MY CH4IR.  
GG: You don’t know that! We’ve already had two calls just this morning.  
GG: For all you do know, this is the advent of a new busy streak for both of us.  
GG: Just as you conveniently step out to pay a visit to our local small business owners.  
GC: TWO C4LLS 4LR34DY?  
GG: Some guy’s parrot flew out the window.  
GC: BUS1N3SS 1S C3RT41NLY, 4S TH3Y S4Y, “BOOM1NG”  
GG: Certainly it is.  
GG: But I didn’t message you just so I could interrogate you about your morning spree into the city, as curious I am about your whereabouts!  
GG: *Ahem.* Miss Leijon’s shop. *Ahem.*  
GC: >:/  
GC: FOR YOUR 1NFORM4T1ON, 4R4N34 S3RK3T H4S G1V3N M3 4 JOB  
GC: SO WH1L3 YOU S1T ON YOUR P4TOOT13 S3ND1NG M3 SMUG M3SS4G3S, 1’M OUT ON TH3 STR33TS R4K1NG 1N TH3 LOOT FOR BOTH OF US!!  
GC: SO WHY DON’T YOU ST1CK **TH4T** 1N YOUR CR4W 4ND S33 HOW 1T T4ST3S  
GG: Hoo hoo.  
GG: What would we do if Ms. Serket stopped paying you to bother the younger Ms. Serket?  
GC: ST4RV3, 1 W4G3R  
GG: And now we get into the crux of the matter.  
GG: Do you think you could pick up some muffins for me?

Terezi mentally pencils in ‘pick up the blueberry muffins Jane likes’ immediately after ‘retrieve Aranea Serket’s death book.’

The King Prawn is a tiny hole in the wall of an unattractively drab and dark building, set between several other unattractively drab and dark buildings. In this part of the city, there are no vendors with brightly colored scarves on the sidewalks, there is just the squeaking wheels of a cart being rolled past. The street smells heavily of smoke. One would not expect Vriska Serket and company to fraternize holes in the wall on streets that stink of an oppressive reeking gray, but at the same time, it is also exactly the sort of place that Terezi feels she fits in. Slipping onto the side-street where the King Prawn is located feels like, in and of itself, participating in something illegal.

Logically, of course, this is nonsense. People are just as capable of committing crimes in places that are brightly lit.

She pushes open the door, setting off the bell just overhead. It is so dusty and so noisy (in the olfactory sense) inside that she promptly sneezes, and has to rub her nose fiercely to prevent another one.

“Welcome to the King Prawn,” Meenah Peixes shouts at her, from behind a pile of indistinguishable objects. She is behind an old desk, feet propped up on the surface. “If you’re here to buy, we don’t take cards, and if you’re here to sell-”

“Rest at ease, citizen,” Terezi announces herself, and just barely misses clipping a precariously tilted urn as she turns the corner. “It’s just me!”

“Aw, glub.” It is possible to feel the sudden drop in Meenah’s interest. She sighs, and flips the page of something that is in her lap, with a rustle. “Pyrope. Let me guess- you’re _not_ here to buy anythin’ off me.”

“Please, Miss Peixes, let’s cut the act. You and I _both_ know why I am here.”

“Cod,” she mumbles, and Terezi knows intrinsically she is rolling her eyes. “Why is it that every time I talk to you you get even more dramatic?”

“I resent this characterization of me!” Terezi folds her hands atop her cane, which she knows does not do much to prove Meenah wrong. “I am a trained professional, and I am here to do my job, and the fact that your partner cannot seem to keep her nose out of trouble is no one’s fault but hers!”

“Ocray,” Meenah agrees.

“So,” she pushes, “Can I speak to her?”

Meenah _hmm_ s, as if she could not care less about this. “She’s not in a great mood.”

Even Vriska’s best moods are something of a terror to behold. This is irrelevant.

“So you _won’t_ tell her that I’m here?” Terezi cocks a brow.

Meenah is unbearably slow as she considers, fingers making a dreadful squeaking noise on the corner of _whatever_ she is reading. “Nah,” she says finally, and shrugs. “I don’t care. Lemme call her.”

The thing that she has been fiddling with turns out to be a magazine, with something bright red on the cover. She drops it on the counter, and bellows: “ _YO, SERKET!”_

“ _What!_ ” Vriska shouts, from somewhere in the back room. Terezi and Meenah listen in silence to the sounds of something clattering, like she has just upset some precarious stack of useless trinkets (Terezi thinks they may have a hoarding problem, collectively!), and then Vriska yells again. “You said you could handle the counter today, Meenah! I _told_ you I didn’t want you bothering me with-”

Vriska emerges from the back room, stinking of something unpleasant, and closes the door with a restrained anger. It appears to take her a second to register Terezi’s presence. “Oh,” she says. “You’re here.”

“That’s right,” Terezi agrees, pleasantly. “I’m here.”

She groans dramatically, shifting her weight onto one leg and jutting her hip out. “You’re kidding me. Meenah, why didn’t you tell her to screw off? You know, I am _so_ not in the mood for this today!”

Meenah attempts to interject, “I-”

“So I hear tell, but the fact remains that I’m here anyway.” Terezi will not allow herself to be chased off by Vriska’s bad mood! “I am quite sorry that you crawled out of the wrong side of the recuperacoon this morning, really, but it doesn’t mean you get a pass! I’ve been asked to determine the whereabouts of a certain book. Aranea sent me.”

“Oh, Aranea?” Meenah brightens considerably. “How’s my gill doing?”

Terezi says, “She’s doing well, I think! Except for her missing book, which she really is quite fussed about, you see.”

“Ain’t seen her in a while, which is a real shame, but I just got so much shit on my plate-”

“Well _Aranea_ can take her bullshit and stuff it down her self-righteous no-good gullet and choke on it!” Vriska proclaims very loudly, a fury she no doubt thinks is righteous in her voice. She is sour, sour, sour, like blueberries still hard and green. “If she wanted to hire someone to come around _harassing_ me at all the damn time, she could have at least had the decency to just come right on out with it and hire a _hooker!_ ”

“Wow,” says Terezi, to no one in particular.

Meenah sighs, exaggerated but with a surprisingly fitting amount of melodrama, and says, “It’s like we can’t have a damn conversation.”

This is hardly the most offensive thing that Vriska has ever said to her, and in fact, she even lacks the usual smug air she gets upon delivering a particularly cutting insult. Terezi clasps her hands on the head of her cane. “Maybe your broodmate wouldn’t need to send me to _harass_ you if you ceased the endless petty thievery you engage in. Maybe you could stop in general involving yourself in every illegal deal on this side of Serenity, and I could stop bothering you, and we could both go on with our lives! Unfortunately, this does not appear to be the case. So if you would, the _book_ , Miss Serket!”

There is a moment of silence in the shop. Terezi believes that perhaps Vriska is taking her time with delivering the scathing retort that is no doubt coming (she really is in a bad mood!), but instead, Vriska seems to deflate, like a popped balloon. “Whatever,” she says. “Tell Aranea I didn’t take her stupid book, okay?”

“Please, don’t you think that the denial routine is getting a bit old?” It has been a while since Vriska thought that one would work on her. “She knows you did it, and I know you did it, so you might as well save us all the trouble and confess.”

“I didn't _take her book_!” Vriska insists, voice rising in volume.

“If _you_ didn’t take it, then who exactly do you suppose _did_?”

“I don’t know!” Vriska gesticulates, as if attempting to physically drive the point home. “You’re the one who likes to run around playing detective, why don’t _you_ try to figure it out!”

When someone is so steeped in the art of lying, they become very good at appearing earnest. Terezi likes to think that she is beyond the point of allowing herself to think that Vriska is being earnest- this is the kind of stupid mistake that you make with Vriska Serket exactly once, and then maybe twice or three times because you are a trusting person, and before you learn any better. But still, she feels.. _something_ like doubt creeping in.

Vriska just sounds very upset.

Terezi, uneasy, adjusts her grip on the cane. “Event trends suggest it is highly likely you are the culprit, you know-”

“I’m not in the mood for this.” There is the sound of something shifting as Vriska leans against it, heavily. She sounds, of all things, _tired_ , when she speaks again. “Could you maybe just- just give it a rest?”

There is something wrong, creeping and insidious, about the tone that the conversation has taken upon. It is like Terezi has stepped into the wrong door and the person she has been speaking to is another person altogether. In her head, there exists an image of who Vriska Serket is, and nowhere in it is there room for her to sound tired, or god forbid, depressed! This cannot be. There is something profoundly wrong with the universe.

Terezi knows she is stilted and awkward (and hates herself for it) when she asks, “Are you.. alright?”

“I can’t believe you’re asking me that,” Vriska snaps at her.

“It’s a fair question!” She does not know what to do with her hands! “You are acting very strangely today.”

Vriska laughs, a mean and bitter sound that Terezi is (despite thinking it supremely cliche) alarmed to be wounded by. “If I was acting _very strangely_ today, it wouldn’t exactly be any of your fucking business anyway, Pyrope!”

If there is one thing to be said about Vriska’s penchant for denial, it is that she has saved Terezi from attempting any further awkward attempts at asking after her wellbeing. This is actually deeply relieving, on a visceral level. “Quite right,” she says, discomfort lingering. Then she taps the cane once on the floor. “Very well then. I suppose I shall take my leave for today. I will return some other time- when you’re more in the mood.”

“Whatever,” Vriska says, not sounding pleased by this either.

“Goodbye!” Terezi nods to Vriska, and then to Meenah, silent at the counter. “Don’t bother cleaning up for next time. I’ve gotten used to the mess.”

Meenah, who Terezi has embarrassed herself profoundly in front of with her displays of emotional incompetence, waves at her lazily. “Say hi to Aranea for me.”

“And tell her that I didn’t take her stupid book!” shouts Vriska, and then she pushes herself away from the counter. Terezi listens while she stomps into the back room.

Then she leaves, walking as quickly as she possibly can without giving them the notion that she is fleeing. _That_ would just be too much. The bell overhead dings behind her as she escapes the King Prawn, and steps back into the poorly lit street.

There is an order to things, a logical way that events are meant to play out, because the nature of the universe is one where dropping a pencil means it will fall, and Vriska Serket does not experience mundane things like _bad days_ or, god forbid, moments of depression! For the first time in a long time of doing her job, Terezi feels like she has seen something that she should not have seen. She wishes that she had not seen it- had, in fact, had the grace and tact to butt out.

It isn’t until she is back on Main Street that Terezi makes the crucial connection: she has not spoken to Vriska since Kanaya Maryam died.

All in all, it is a rather disturbing revelation.

She is saved from having to consider the meaning of this (very conveniently) by her phone buzzing in her pocket.

Terezi pauses in the middle of the sidewalk, forcing an old woman with a cart to go around her, so that she can answer her call. There are not a lot of people these days who call her personal phone! Nepeta does not have her number, so far as she knows- there is Karkat, and there is Dave, and there is Jane. Anyone else is not the sort to bother calling her up for a chat.

“Hello?” She says into the phone.

The person on the other end is, predictably, Jane. “It’s me, Jane,” she says shortly, a hesitant note to her voice. Terezi imagines that she is fidgeting with her nails again.

“Hello, Jane,” Terezi greets her. “I’m sorry I am not back yet! I just finished talking to Vriska.”

“Oh?” In the background, something squeaks. “That was actually rather quick. How did it go?”

“I don’t think that she took Aranea’s book,” Terezi admits to Jane. It feels rather odd to say this aloud, but she is aware that it is the truth.

Perhaps Jane senses that something about this is off, but she is kind enough to keep mum about it. “What a shame. I suppose that we shall have to actually investigate its disappearance.”

“I’ll take care of it! But not right now- right now, I have some blueberry muffins to pick up.” Terezi begins walking again, rejoining the stream of pedestrians. Good old Jane- always prepared to remind Terezi of what her _real_ job is.

“It’s not necessary,” Jane says quickly. “I’ll just have a snack instead. Why don’t you come back to the office?”

“You want me to come back to the office instead?” Although Jane is not there to see it, Terezi quirks a brow.

“I think that would be best,” she agrees.

“This is very suspicious, Miss Crocker!” Despite how very odd it is that Jane has rescinded her muffin request, Terezi makes the necessary adjustments to her course. “If I come back to the office and I find that you are being held hostage with a gun to your head- and did not even bother to signal me!- I shall be very upset.”

“Oh, no, nothing quite so sinister.” Jane laughs the laugh of someone who is very nervous.

“Then what is so urgent?”

“I..” On the other end, Jane pauses, leaving Terezi to listen to what is unmistakably the sound of their lopsided ceiling fan. Jane is hushed when she finally responds: “I really think you ought to come and see for yourself.”

And, well, _that_ is certainly enough to put an extra spring in Terezi’s step.

For all the shit there is to talk about the King Prawn, it isn’t really as if Terezi works in one of the sleek offices in the high-rises that loom omnipresently just blocks away from Serenity’s downtown. Aside from the fact that office space is _expensive_ , Terezi suspects that such glamour would tend to dazzle her clientele! No one wants to ask for pictures of their boss banging the intern in a place where there are, god forbid, windows. Her office is a space on the second story of a slightly dingy building, which houses several apartments (including her own!) and other miscellaneous practices.

There is an elevator, but Terezi makes it a principle of hers never to take an elevator when stairs will do. She climbs the stairs at a brisk pace, and then proceeds down the hallway. She does not pause before pushing open the door, with the placard hung on front.

PYROPE  
DETECTIVE AGENCY  
4013

Hung next to her last name, in slightly mismatched print, a second card reads:

AND CROCKER

“Hello, Miss Crocker!” calls Terezi as she enters. “No need to languish any longer! I am here for whatever you wish to show me.”

Jane has been sitting in the rolling chair behind her desk, rocking it back and forth in the way that makes it squeak like a grub’s chew toy. It is a terrible habit. Terezi pulls a face when Jane leaps to her feet, sending it squeaking _again_. She smells sharply of anxiety- a soapy smell, much like burying one’s nose in fresh mint. “Thank goodness,” she says, hushed. “I really didn’t know what to do-”

Terezi shrugs off her jacket, and tosses it onto the coat rack. “Shall we take this into my office?”

“Really, I think that we ought to talk out here,” protests Jane, but Terezi is already brushing past her.

“Nonsense!” she declares. “I am very tired and would like to sit down.”

“Oh, please,” Jane mutters, very obviously annoyed. This is of no consequence, however- Jane is very frequently annoyed with something or other. Terezi makes a beeline for the closed door of her office.

For some reason, Jane moves to get the door before Terezi can, but it is not a large office! There is not a lot of space for Terezi to cover. She seizes the handle and pulls the door open, only to reveal- in one of the chairs reserved for consulting clients, nonetheless!- a human girl, dressed all in black.

This is not yet cause for alarm, though Jane certainly seems to be _alarmed._ Clients are nothing unusual, though Terezi also typically prefers the clients _not_ to be in her office when she is not there. The girl herself smells distinctly of licorice. It is not an unpleasant smell, really. And of course, Terezi recognizes her- even if she had not brushed elbows with Rose Lalonde once or twice, just because of social proximity, she would have recognized the girl from the news coverage. None of this, actually, is cause to be alarmed!

“Well, hello, Investigator,” says Rose.

“Hello, Miss Lalonde!” Terezi greets her, and proceeds to her desk. Jane follows, singularly sullen. “It is your poor luck that you caught me while I was out running errands. Jane doesn’t usually send clients in while I am not here.”

“It’s not her fault.” Rose folds her hands neatly in her lap. “Miss Crocker did attempt to have me wait outside. I’m afraid that I insisted.”

“Insisted, hm!” This certainly explains Jane’s sheepish behavior. Terezi lifts her eyebrows, first at Jane, and then at Rose Lalonde, who seems altogether unperturbed. “Then I suppose you must have something of great importance to discuss.”

“The utmost,” she agrees.

Terezi waves her hand at Jane, who is hanging around as if she fancies herself some sort of sentinel. Her posture is far too poor for this. “Jane, maybe you should pull up a chair! I am sure that you do not want to remain standing for whatever Miss Lalonde has for us.”

It is easy to feel Rose’s eyes trained on her while Jane seizes the other empty chair. She drags it across the floor, each bump a noisy _thump_. Rose has the same affected nonchalance as her brother.

There are quite a lot of things that Terezi knows about Rose, information about her that she has catalogued in periphery. She knows that she drove Dave crazy! She knows that Rose Lalonde is is purveyor of information and a witch of some repute- as reputed as one can be when one’s profession is illegal. She knows that she had been dating Kanaya Maryam, community pillar and good friend, for a unit of time close to four years. She is, of course, aware of the murder of Kanaya Maryam. She knows that Rose had been briefly held under suspicion. She even recalls seeing her at the funeral. Rose had been the last to leave.

“At your own convenience,” Terezi says, now that Jane has taken a seat.

Rose takes her time. She folds one leg over the other. She takes a deep breath. She examines Terezi for another moment. And then she says, “You are aware, of course, that my matesprit, Kanaya Maryam, passed earlier this month.”

“There is not a person in Serenity who is not aware, I believe.”

“Kanaya’s body has gone missing,” Rose continues seamlessly. “I would like you to find it.”

Jane takes the opportunity to clear her throat.

“Missing?” Terezi repeats. “In what sense?”

“In the sense that it is no longer in the ground where we put it,” she says, an edge in her voice.

Miss Lalonde’s voice is even, smooth, and just a bit low. She formulates every word like she is biting off a bullet. Terezi thinks that the black ensemble and the demurely folded hands are meant as a disguise of sorts. She is playing the part of the mourning lover who had simply been attempting to pay her respects, only to discover her lover’s grave ransacked. All in all, she is not a particularly gifted actress. But it is difficult not to feel sympathy for the girl.

Terezi is ill-versed, however, in expressing things like sympathy. “You’re aware, I trust, of the recent rash of grave-robbings,” she says. “It has been all over the news.”

“I’m aware.” Of course, she is aware. “But I’m afraid I cannot wait for the officials to dredge up Kanaya’s remains.”

The smell of suspicion that comes off Jane in waves is so pungent Terezi is surprised Rose Lalonde herself does not pick up on it. “Before we go any further,” Jane begins, “Perhaps you should explain to us how you even figured out Miss Maryam’s remains were missing in the _first_ place.”

“I can pay, of course,” Rose says, like Jane has not spoken. “There is a sizeable amount of money at my disposable. I am aware this is hardly your usual fare.”

Terezi’s usual fare involves harassing Vriska Serket over petty thievery and taking pictures of people involved in illicit dalliances. Missing corpses is _hardly_ the sort of thing one thinks to ask their local private eye about: this sort of heinous crime is one best left to the police. Bodysnatchers are a breed unto themselves, though as most trolls know (even if few would admit it!) it is _sort_ of a societal problem. But Terezi does not know who on earth would want to dig up Kanaya Maryam’s corpse.

“How much, exactly?” she asks.

“Twice your usual rate,” answers Rose.

Twice the usual rate is not even necessary to haggle over! Twice the usual rate to find Kanaya Maryam’s corpse is an amount to blink at. The problem, then, is not the money: the problem is whether or not finding Kanaya Maryam’s corpse is even the sort of thing she should engage in at all.

Jane still seems positively alarmed.

“The prospect of corpse hunting is positively outlandish-”

“What in the _world_ do you want with her corpse anyway?” Jane interrupts.

“-be _quiet,_ Miss Crocker!”

“I suppose that the notion is rather outlandish indeed,” Miss Lalonde agrees, as if she has not heard Jane’s outburst at all. “But I refuse to stand for this latest indignity. Will you do it?”

Terezi purses her lips.

As if perhaps sensing Terezi’s reluctance to commit herself to a venture which involves hunting down a departed acquaintance’s corpse, Rose looks down, smoothing her skirt across her knees. It is a receding gesture, terribly wilting. “I can give you time, of course.”

“Time?” Terezi inquires. “A missing corpse seems rather like the sort of thing you wouldn’t want to take your time with.”

“Not too much time,” Rose acquiesces. She smiles.

Terezi wonders if this is the sort of behavior that is common when someone is grieving. She does not think that Rose seems like someone who is in mourning over their deceased matesprit, but at the same time, cannot quite conceive of how she could possibly _not_ be. Assumptions are never safe to make, and in Terezi’s opinion, she is especially in the dark when it comes to this one.

“You will have your answer by the end of the day,” Terezi promises.

This seems to be satisfactory. Rose Lalonde gets to her feet, purse clutched in her hands. “Not  too long, I don’t think,” she agrees. “Allow me to leave you with my contact information.”

The slip of paper that she places on Terezi’s desk has her name, a phone number, and a chumhandle, all handwritten in curly black script. Terezi admires that she is so prepared, having no doubt taken the time to write this out. She simultaneously leans back, not wanting to be caught examining the note until Rose is well and gone. That would really just be impolite.

“Good golly,” Jane says, as soon as Rose has walked out. “The girl has really lost it!”

“Why do you say so?” Terezi asks, sliding the note towards herself with the tip of her finger. “She certainly did not seem unstable or erratic to me.”

“Oh, please.” It is quite easy to tell that Jane is frowning. “I know you must be aware how absurd it all is. Not only is she attempting to hire us to find her girlfriend’s corpse, but she couldn’t even explain what for!”

“It seems logical to _me_ that she wants her girlfriend’s corpse returned!”

Jane leans forward, bracing one forearm on the desk. She has the sleeves of her shirt, blue and green, neatly rolled up. It is rather dashing, but Terezi does not think she has done it at all on purpose. “She is a notorious witch-for-hire, Terezi.”

Darling Jane! Terezi does not know where to start on this one, quite frankly. She leans in too. “Jane,” she says, kindly, “We are hardly in the business of serving reputable folk.”

“She needs _help_ ,” Jane insists, “ _Not_ enabling!”

“What would you do, then?”

This appears to throw Jane for a loop. She drums her fingers on the edge of the desk. “Invite her to a bake sale, perhaps,” she says, finally.

Inviting Rose Lalonde to a bake sale is such a humorous image that Terezi is forced to allow herself several seconds to simply grin at it. She leans back again- she would rather not bicker with Jane over silly things like the matter of Kanaya Maryam’s corpse. “I understand your misgivings, of course. It isn’t like I want to involve myself in this!”

“But what?”

There is no tactful or subtle way to put it, Terezi thinks, so she just says it. “But isn’t Kanaya Maryam owed a peaceful afterlife?”

“I wouldn’t know,” says Jane, sounding uncomfortable. “I never met the girl.”

“She certainly deserves it,” Terezi confirms, which is a massive understatement of the fact.

Terezi had not known Kanaya Maryam very _well,_ but she had known her. She’d known her well enough for her death to be depressing and jarring and frankly a bit disturbing, but not well enough to miss her. Oh, it makes her sad occasionally, to walk past Kanaya’s store and think that she will never again bump into her on the street, or see her in passing at a soiree where Karkat will eat slightly too many black scottie dogs, or exchange light conversation over coffee or bagels or fried beetles. But it makes her sadder to think that Karkat has moved across the country, and it makes her more unsettled to think that Vriska may be mourning.

There is a strange disconnect in what she feels for Kanaya Maryam’s death, and what she thinks she ought to.

“It is rather horrible.” Jane sounds reluctantly sad. “The girl is murdered, and now her remains are stolen. Sometimes enough bad is enough.”

“I think I had better think on this,” Terezi declares.

Terezi sends Jane home early only a couple hours later and closes the office, which is something she is within her rights as her own boss to do. She has had a spectacularly strange day, and is useless anyway, and does not want to waste her time on chasing colorful birds around the city! What she wants to do is go home and lock herself in her dingy and permanently dark apartment, and sit there and contemplate mortality and fate morosely for several hours.

This is precisely what she goes home to do.

Her apartment block is small, in a building with fully functioning amenities, in a place that is at least reasonably respectable. The fact that it is dingy and dark is more due to her personal failures than any inherent to the block _itself_. It would certainly be a little embarrassing if anyone were ever to see it!

She is distinctly morose as she closes the door, locking it tight.

It is rather silly of her to only begin to be concerned by Kanaya Maryam after she has been dead nearly a month, but all in all, it has been the strangest sort of day. It is difficult not to think about Rose Lalonde, smooth and collected and discussing her matesprit’s corpse. It is harder still not to think about Vriska Serket!

There is Vriska Serket, who she can only suppose is experiencing some form of grief which makes her act like a child throwing a temper tantrum. Which makes her uninterested in humoring Terezi! Terezi is, of course, not upset about this- she is not a silly schoolgirl, mad because Vriska Serket will not join her on the playground! She is not, of all things, a jilted admirer. She is deeply unsettled by the glimpse at something more to Vriska than a petty thief. She is, perhaps, worried.

Then there is Rose Lalonde.

Terezi closes herself in the empty second bedroom, which is labeled a bedroom only through the kindness of her heart. She draws the shades, and then, in the middle of the hardwood floor, she pours out the sack of tiny bones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not completely satisfied with the end of this, but i'd rather not wind up taking another week to finish it!! ty for reading!


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